The Urbanization of International Law and International Relations: The Rising Soft Power of Cities in Global Governance

This article examines the rising influence of cities in global governance and on international law, despite the existing international legal and political framework, which is designed to exclude them. It explores the various strategies and tools utilized by city leaders to leapfrog over their national counterparts in order to autonomously access the international policymaking and law-making world. These include (1) coalescing together to form large networks, which engage in city or “glocal” diplomacy; (2) allying with well-connected and well-resourced international organizations; (3) gaining inclusion in UN multilateral agendas; (4) mirroring state-based coalitions and their high-profile events; (5) harnessing the language of international law (especially international human rights and environmental law) to advance agendas at odds with their national counterparts; and (6) adopting resolutions, declarations, and voluntarily self-policed commitments––what I refer to as “global law.” The paper argues that the existing concepts and frameworks that we use to explain the international political and legal world order––concepts that inhere in international legal literature and in international relations theory––are ill-equipped to conceptualize the changing status of cities, as well as other sub-national actors, in global politics. The article concludes by offering a new framework, with new concepts and updated verbiage, for understanding the changing relationship of cities to both international law and international relations, a framework I refer to as the “Urbanization of Global Relations.

Exploring the application of the principles of Stoic philosophy in the workplace

Chrystie Watson explored the application of the principles of Stoic philosophy in the workplace. She found professionals experienced greater acceptance of what was within their control, were better able to regulate their responses to changing circumstances and make clearer decisions while building an awareness of the contributions they make to the common good through their practice of Stoicism. These findings may inform the design of professional development initiatives and programs

Environmental Mainstreaming in Mine Action: A Case Study of Moving Beyond Do No Harm

Interest within the mine action sector in mainstreaming environmental issues has rocketed in the past few years. The establishment of cross-sector working groups, the investigatory work of organizations such as the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), and increased donor interest in directing funds toward environmental projects are arguably the result of broad scientific consensus on the increasingly destructive effects of anthropogenic forces on global ecosystems. The well-established concept of do no harm1 is a framework commonly applied in the broader humanitarian sector and has been put forward as directly applicable to environmental concerns within mine action.2 The concept broadly reflects current approaches of mine action organizations to mitigate and minimize direct (negative) environmental impacts of mine clearance operations. This is reflected in the current International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) on Environmental Management3 (under review), with its focus on avoiding environmental harm through the direct impacts of mine action activities, including through emissions, erosion, residual waste, and harm to wildlife and vegetation. This article posits that, while the do no harm approach remains well suited to mitigation of direct impacts of mine action activities and should continue to be applied, it is necessary to understand it as a single component within a broader framework to take full advantage of the potential for environmental mainstreaming within mine action

Fragile masculinity:social inequalities in the narrative frame and discursive construction of a mass shooter’s autobiography/manifesto

'Fragile masculinity' is an article that was originally published in the Academy of Social Science journal Contemporary Social Science (2016) now reprinted in an edited collection, Crime and Society

Discourses of desire: the normative in online sex talk

PhD 2011 QMThis thesis, grounded in feminist sociology and queer theory, examines sex, sexuality, and desire in naturally occurring synchronous conversations within a non-sexually themed online community. Although the community is rooted in computing culture (i.e., a multi-user domain) and is not sexual in scope or purpose, sex talk is prevalent and persistent in the corpus. Seventy-five conversational logs, each covering 24 hours of conversations, are analysed using qualitative sociolinguistic discourse analysis. The findings demonstrate that the participants engage in sexual conversations (e.g., automated sexual commands, joking, self-disclosure, cybersex) that make use of the spatial and technical resources available to them, and that there are clear boundaries in the language used for sexual conversations. Sexual conversations are found across virtual spaces in this community and are based on in-group talk, often to create social belonging and shared meaning between speakers. While participants sometimes challenge existing social discourses of sexuality when adopting group-specific norms and narrative styles, they often enact them, particularly in regards to heteronormative heterosexuality and gender. This thesis proposes that sex and sexuality can be seen in relation to the social comprehensive, which includes individual agency, social infrastructure, everyday experience, discourses, and shared meaning. The framework underscores the relevance of sex and its relationship to the larger social world in spontaneous and everyday conversations about sex and desire from an online community. It contributes to our limited scholarly knowledge of how people discuss sex, allowing for the examination of the discourses that emerge in and through speakers’ words, the stories that they tell, how they are told, and to whom.ORSAS scholarship Scholarships from both EECS and the School of Languages, Linguistics and Fil

Aktivitas Antibakteri Ekstrak Herba Krokot (Portulaca oleracea L.) terhadap Staphylococcus aureus dan Escherichia coli

Krokot (Portulaca oleracea L.) can be used as traditional medicine is to cure skin diseases and diarrhea. This study aimed to determine the phytochemical profile of krokot herb extract qualitatively, and to determine the effect of krokot herb extract on the growth of Staphylococcus aureus FNCC 0047 and Escherichia coli FNCC 0091. Testing the effectiveness of antibacterial calculated using test wells with bacteria S. aureus and E. coli. This study used 6 levels is 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100%, positive control (ampicillin) and a negative control (distilled water). The results showed that the phytochemical profile krokot herb extract contains tannin, saponin and flavonoid. The existence of the effect of krokot herb extract against the bacteria S. aureus is characterized by the formation of zones 90% inhibition at concentrations of 2 cm, concentration of 100% of 2.2cm, beside of negative control, concentration of 50-70% not make clear zone and E. coli at a concentration of 90% of 0.6 cm, concentration of 100% of 0.9 cm, beside of negative control, concentration of 50-70% not make clear zone. Krokot herb extracts more influence on the bacteria S. aureus than E. coli bacterial wall structure is polar and easily penetrate krokot extract. Krokot herb extract concentration that is 90% and 100% effective which inhibits bacteria S. aureus. Research showed that the higher the concentration of antibacterial agent is given the greater the inhibition zone formed

Development of novel laser diagnostic techniques for the quantitative study of premixed flames

The main topic of this thesis concerns the development and application of laser diagnostic techniques for accurate temperature measurements and for the determination of flamefront properties in premixed flames that can serve as input data for computational fluid dynamical (CFD) models in technical combustion. The work comprises of a number of related studies, to address problems of relevance in the field of combustion research. The first part of this work involves the development and testing of an improved method for the computation of flamefront curvature in lean premixed turbulent flames. Measurements of spatially resolved heat release rate along the flamefront were then compared with the curvature data and it could be shown that a significant correlation exists between local rate of heat release and flamefront curvature. The results here agree with predictions from CFD models and improve on previous experimental attempts to find a correlation between curvature and heat release. In the second part of this work, the focus was shifted towards the development and application of improved thermometry techniques. One study was on the improvement and application of a coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) setup to an acoustically-forced turbulent lean premixed flame stabilised on a burner, whose design was modelled to mimic phenomena of relevance in industrial combustors. In a related previous study reported in the literature two-line OH planar laser induced fluorescence had been applied to this flame and it was suspected that the results were inaccurate. Using CARS, these inaccuracies could be verified, amounting to discrepancies in temperature of up to 47% compared to the true temperatures. A major effort towards the end of this project was focused on the improvement of traditional thermometry techniques, in order to make them more accurate, faster, and spatially resolved. A technique based on indium two-line atomic fluorescence (TLAF) thermometry was developed and applied, which employed a novel extended cavity diode laser design, and it was shown for the first time that temperature measurements with high accuracy and precision could be performed in low pressure sooting flames without recourse to calibration. Both the high precision and accuracy of the technique allowed for the deduction that the temperature in the flames studied here is relatively insensitive to changes in pressure in stark contrast to the soot volume fraction. Finally, it is shown for the first time that low power diode lasers can be used in combination with indium TLAF to measure spatially and temporally highly resolved temperatures in a quasi-continuous fashion. We demonstrated such measurements at effective rates of 3.5 kHz in a steady laminar test flame yielding an unprecedented precision of 1.5 % at ~2000 K at this measurement rate

discrete time dynamic oligopolies with adjustment constraints

A classical $n$-firm oligopoly is considered first with linear demand and cost functions which has a unique equilibrium. We then assume that the output levels of the firms are bounded in a sense that they are unwilling to make small changes, the output levels are bounded from above, and if the optimal output level is very small then the firms quit producing, which are realistic assumptions in real economies. In the first part of the paper, the best responses of the firms are determined and the existence of infinitely many equilibria is verified. The second part of the paper examines the global dynamics of the duopoly version of the game. In particular we study the stability of the system, the bifurcations which can occur and the basins of attraction of the existing attracting sets, as a function of the speed of adjustment parameter